The Truth Shall Set You Free

So...I haven't read out of our texts in about a week, but I have to say that I have read a SHIT load. That's right, I said shit. I read Anne "Essie Mae" Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi this weekend, actually in less than 16 hours, and it was actually fantabulous. It really opened my eyes to the realities of living as a young poor black person in the 50s and 60s. Anne was the oldest of 9 kids, could hardly afford clothes to go to school (her segregated school) and couldn't wear shoes because the one pair she owned was strictly for school. She made great grades in school and actually tutored her white boss' children in math. Anne Moody went to college at a few different institutions and became a civil rights activist and participated in famous sit-ins and marches, including on Washington, where MLK Jr. gave his "I have a Dream" speech.
Anyways, great book--everyone needs to NEEDS TO read it.
Also, I've read The Castle of Otronto by Horace Walpole. That one...not as great. Pretty weird, and I don't think that someone would really gain too much intelligence from reading this, which is reportedly one of the first ever horror stories. A preview: The son of a king gets squished by a GIANT helmet...and then the monarchy falls into chaos. EH. Alright, but not too great.
But, I have been working on my new blog about "A Good Man is Hard to FInd." Check it out ladies and gents! My renderings are pretty sweet. :)

Checker out!

Check out my new blog at www.goodfindchrystal.blogspot.com!!!


I'm pretty proud of my flabulous artwork, but the blog isn't done yet--it's still a work in progress!

Responses to Barn Burning Questions

1. I think the number one way American teenagers find their own individualiy is to expirement with it. Who are they? Teenagers go through many phases, all in the form of rebellion from their parents, which tests their limits as well as their own selves as to who they are and what they really stand for: Some go through a 'gothic' stage, in which they refuse to conform to society's views of 'normal.' Some go through the drug stage, in which they try to tap nto their rebellious and higher conscious to find the truth in what is right and wrong morally. Some go through the sexually intense 'slut' phase, where they attempt to prove that their bodies are in fact their own possessions and not to be ruled by their parents--the same with piercings and possibly tattoos. I went through a lot of things as a teenager, and I think that if I were to try to rule it down to one particular thing I did to find my own values as a teen, it would be really hard, because I had both my mother's values and my father's values, which were totally different things (they were divorced when I was 12). I went through the 'Goth' thing, which was totally against my mother's values, but not beyond her understanding, and then I went through a bi-curious/bisexual period (I was with a girl for 3 years in highschool) to my father's horror, but my mother's ____<--I'm not sure what word goes there.

2. As someone with 2 other sisters, we destructed a LOT of eachother's things to get back at eachother, but we all felt terrible afterwards. I could never destroy purposefully somebody else's hard earned possession and feel justified. Never. I don't think it's really possible.

3. I don't think the story would have much of an impact if it weren't through Sarty's consciousness. The father's consciousness would have left much less of an imprint on anybody's mind I think, and I believe that his only other option if he watned to make this tory a good one, would have been to write it from his wife''s perspective in trying to deal with her husband's compulsive childlike behavior. Captivating her having to pick up the pieces each time he went on one of his rampades would have been good, and maybe even equally as epic, but he didn't do that--Sarty's perspective was a good choice on behalf of Faulkner.

4. I think the number one symbol in the story is the destructive power of fire, which destructs everything in it's path, including the childhood of Sarty. The initial court hearing of Mr. Snopes drove Sarty crazy. He didn't know whether he should lie, or tell the truth or lie...it was complete chaos in his mind, which is exactly what fire is--chaos. You can not predict the path fire is going to take, who it is going to kill, and what it is going to destroy. All you know is that it is dangerous in many different ways. The father tore apart the family by burning things down. His son was dirty and hungry; it is doubtless because his father couldn't keep a steady job for thef act that he took personal matters into his own hands and grudges led him to destruction of property. When it got to the point when Sarty knew he could no longer either look up to or defend his father, it was too late and everything was ruined.

5. Do the class issues ahve any parallels today...good question...I'll have to think about that one. I think that those who destruct property are those who don't understand the value behind that property. Does that make sense? The father in this story doesn't have any worldly possessions--he has a wagon and a family. Burning barns is easy for him, because he never had to earn the money to build a barn. The money he earns goes to feeding his family, and maybe burning others' possessions helps him feel better because he is hurting someone who, in his eyes has all the money in the world to build another one. On the other hand, because he has never experienced that money, maybe he is hoping to devastate that family as much as he is devastated on a day to day basis so that they see that what they ask of him is far too steep. In today's day and age, it seems like the ones to destrcut others' property are teenagers, who have been given every penny they've ever spent and don't know the value of a dollar. Furthermore, upper class teens don't tend to cause that sort of trouble (surely, they cause trouble, but of different kinds) and it is the lower class teens who seem to devalue possessions--possibly because they see them as unattainable, and also that they will be not be held accountable for those actions because they lack the necessary funds to make up for the loss they've caused somebody else.

6. This is one of those questions I will have to answer after I read it again, because, to be honest, it took me three days to read this story because it started off so...unreadable.

Final Projectimundo

So...my understanding is that we are supposed to pick any short story from our text and firstly take photos of the elements of fiction with quoted captions from the story itself; pictures of characters, plot, setting, symbols and theme (can we do theme?). We are to know the story inside and out, so that we then can teach that story to the class in a designated amount of time. Also, we should create a blog about and for the story, and write a paper about our experience with this assignment. I'm sort of excited about this project--I just wish there was more time to do it in...My story to follow......

Barn Burning

So...I was impressed by Faulkner's writing style and thought he was pretty (not just pretty--very) talented in the craft of building fiction in the form of short stories, but he sure confused me. Hepworth said in class that it was very obvious who the antagonist was in the story, "Barn Burning," but I think it was obviously NOT obvious, because I thought the first half of the story's antagonist was the Justice of the Peace. The boy in the story, the protagonist (obvious), looked up to his father for most of the story and sided with his father, as most of us would have done, which leads us to believe that those who went against him or his father would have to have been the antagonists. It is not until the end of the story when we actually get proof that the father really did set fire to the barns, and even then, it wasn't entirely clear to me that it was the father ar all at first, or rather they were innocent victims of coincidence. I'm not completely narrow-minded, however, and gathered that it had to have been the father who set the fires, and the son, once enlightened had a huge problem with it, and ran away forever. What a sad ending--he had a mother who loved him very much as well as an Aunt who surely would have taken care of him with or without his father, as is maternal instinct, BUT the fact that they held him while his father took off toward the barn leads me to believe that they were willing participants. Any takers? What does anyone else think? Were they in on it, or were they just simply victims of a patriarchal society in which whatever the 'head of the household' decides is doable is what becomes done--right or wrong. I'm curious.

Updated Readin' List

Updated Calendar

WEEK ONE
Emily Dickinson

WEEK TWO
Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman

WEEK THREE
Robert Frost
Walt Whitman

WEEK FOUR
Raymond Carver
Ezra Pound

WEEK FIVE
Raymond Carver
Charles Reznikoff
Katherine Anne Porter

WEEK SIX
Amy Lowell
Ernest Hemingway

WEEK SEVEN
John Steinbeck

WEEK EIGHT
Elaine Goodale Eastman
Poetry

WEEK NINE
Spring Break

WEEK TEN
Sarah M.B. Piatt
Poetry

WEEK ELEVEN
Gary Snyder
William Carlos Williams

WEEK TWELVE
Updike
Faulkner

WEEK THIRTEEN
Faulkner

WEEK FOURTEEN
WEEK FIFTEEN
WEEK SIXTEEN

My Version of Trust Me

Trust Me
When her son, Harry was three or four, Harriett had been doing the laundry when she came upon her husband’s pants in the hamper, and as was the routine, dug deep into his carpenter pockets to find miscellaneous items that should not be washed in her new machine. Usually, she would come across a beer cap, sometimes some dollar bills along with pennies and paperclips, but today there was a folded four by six inch piece of paper that she withdrew from the depths of his pants. Upon looking, she noticed the writing--very feminine cursive-- which read:
“I thought you should have my number so we can meet up at the pool again. Maybe my lifeguard training will come in handy! XOXO Roxanne 256-9908”
Pool? Again? XOXO? Harriett felt a little dizzy and knew without looking that her face had flushed, but with her miraculously cunning fem-warfare tactics, she decided playing it cool would be the best way to go about this. Her family rarely went out, and she resigned that on Saturday, they would take a trip to the community pool where this Roxanne apparently worked and then, only then would she know the real truth. Perhaps this fancy-scripted woman with the brothel-esque name was just some floozy with whom her husband had no interest. Her days crept by ever too slowly, but she kept her secret to herself until the weekend; she even left the blasphemous note in his pants to go through the wash, as to avoid all worries on her husband’s part.
When the week came to an end, Harriett went to her son, Harold first, who was thrilled to go swimming, and who also encouraged his reluctant father to take the family trip to the pool. She knew that if something was going to happen here, she had to look her finest, as is woman nature, so she pinned her hair up in the most subtle, yet sexy of ways and searched out her little black bathing suit--the one with the mini-skirt attached, as was the fashion-- and headed for the pool with her family.
When they arrived, she paid close attention to her husband, who seemed to be sweating an awful lot. Whether it was due to the ninety-seven degree summer day or the foreshadowing of his doom, she wasn’t completely sure. She hoped it was the former. There were chairs spread out, where Harriett set up camp and set everyone free to play while she scoped out her surroundings. Harold was sort of anxious about the water and hung back while his dad tried to urge him in with him. Soon, a very shapely red-head, dressed in the custom lifeguard attire walked up to three or four year old Harold and swooned at him.
“Aren’t you cute? Are you going to go swimming, honey?” She turned then, and said something Harriett couldn’t make out but she did make out the face that was painted up the front of her husband’s head. A smile and an unsure glance towards the home wrecker and then toward Harriett left a familiar sourness in her stomach, and thankfully the bodacious red-haired buffoon swished off to her podium before any farther steps needed to be taken. All that Harriett could think to do was to dig through her beach bag for sun block to rub into her blindingly white skin. When she looked over, little Hassy was standing at the edge of the pool, sans floaters, with his father beckoning him to jump.
“Jump right into my hands,” and at that very instant, Miss Roxanne bent over at her podium, exposing her round, freckled buttocks, while Harry jumped, trustingly into the chlorinated green pool, through his distracted, piggish father’s outstretched arms and down into the water. Harriett let out a shriek, which apparently caught her husband’s attention, as he immediately reached into the water and pulled out his son.
Harriett was overwhelmed with emotion, as she stormed to the edge of the pool as Harry was carried out of the shallow end, and without thought--without warning, reared back and slapped her husband dead across the face before taking her son in her hands. That night they fought long and hard, and her husband solemnly swore never to speak to the flame-haired woman again.
Years later, Harry asked about that day at the pool and why his father had dropped him, to which Harriett said nothing and her estranged husband plead forgetfulness. It was best the poor boy didn’t know the truth anyway.

William Carlos Williams

Is anyone else just fed up with this guy?? I'm not too huge of a fan of his, although I do think that his manipulation of English grammar is fabulous and to be looked up to. I just think that sometimes he makes no sense, for instance, the Pink Locust poem is predominately about a flower, which throws me off a little bit, because I get distracted by the title and the early reference to the locust, which turns into a complete neglect of the locust analogy. Not that the poem is bad, but that it is frustrating. He uses so many different metaphors and analogies that it encrypts his message almost. I get upset because reading his poetry is hard work, but even when you delve deeply into it, you don't get anything too jaw-dropping. Consider me a Williams critic I suppose--maybe it's over my head!